AUTHOR=Rekker Roderik TITLE=Electoral change through generational replacement: An age-period-cohort analysis of vote choice across 21 countries between 1948 and 2021 JOURNAL=Frontiers in Political Science VOLUME=6 YEAR=2024 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/political-science/articles/10.3389/fpos.2024.1279888 DOI=10.3389/fpos.2024.1279888 ISSN=2673-3145 ABSTRACT=

People’s generation may have become one of the core predictors of their vote choice. This study examines this hypothesis across 21 Western established democracies between 1948 and 2021. An age-period-cohort analysis on 258 national election surveys (N = 462.084) reveals that the most recent generations are much less likely to vote for the major right-wing party in two-party systems. In multi-party systems, the gradual decline of Christian democratic parties has been largely driven by the generational replacement of pre-WW2 cohorts. Social democratic and conservative parties may face a challenge in future decades because their support is particularly low among the most recent generations whereas liberal, socialist, and particularly green parties stand to gain from generational replacement. Far-right parties have been least popular among voters who came of age during the 1930s and 1940s. A small life-cycle effect points out that people over the age of 65 vote slightly more conservative.